Not applicable
1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed broadly relates to the field of billing systems, and more particularly relates to the field of electronic billing for customer services.
2. Description of the Related Art
The use of networks and network computers continues to grow. One recent development is the Internet and of the World Wide Web (xe2x80x9cWebxe2x80x9d). The Web has become immensely popular largely because of the ease of finding information and the user-friendliness of today""s browsers. A feature known as hypertext allows a user to access information from one Web page to another Web page by simply pointing with a mouse or equivalent pointing device at the hypertext and clicking. Another feature that makes the Web attractive is having the ability to process the information in remote Web pages without the requirement of having a specialized application program for each kind of content accessed. Thus, the same content is viewed across different platforms. Browser technology has evolved to enable the running of applications that manipulate this content across a wide variety of different platforms. Networks using Web browser servers and technologies for use inside organizations and corporations, called Intranets have also grown in use.
One of the benefits of the Internet has been the possibility of distributing personally tailored information to an individual user. This is an important advancement from the broadcast TV and radio where the information is customized to groups of people usually based on audience demographics and not individually tailored. Internet services such as InfoBeat or PointCast, allow users to provide his/her preferences. These preferences include the types of news and market information desired. Only the news and market information matching the user""s preference is delivered. Other portal services, such as Yahoo and MSN (Microsoft Network), allow a user to personalize his/her portal page with information that may be interesting to the user. Such information may include the user""s stock portfolio prices, local weather, and favorite sports team scores and more. There also are books and music Internet services that monitor the books and music CDS bought by a user and notify the user about similar books and music. Although these Internet based services are popular, the ability to target specific user preferences still has shortcomings.
One shortcoming of today""s services is the very limited ability to share individual user""s preferences between different service providers such as between Yahoo and MSN and AOL (America Online) and other third party providers. One method service providers, such as AOL, use to share information with other providers is to make the entire AOL subscriber database available to all its subscribers. However, this method is very much like a broadcast TV or radio model where no individual information or preferences from an user is available. In the electronic messaging services, many third parties use lists of customers or subscribers to send out information. This xe2x80x9cspammingxe2x80x9d or unsolicited electronic mail is undesirable to many subscribers. Especially, electronic messages that are not tailored to a user""s preferences or demographics. Therefore a need exists to provide a method to share user demographic information and user preferences between the service providers with out the requirement of spamming.
Another method providers of service use to share subscriber or customer information with a third party is to provide or sell its subscriber information to other service providers. However passing customer or subscriber information to a third party is problematic. First, the customer or subscriber may not want the third party to have access to certain preference information, therefore the privacy for each subscriber may be an issue. Secondly, by passing subscriber information to other third parties the information collected by a service provider may be lost to competitors. Subscriber information is a valuable business property of a service provider. The release of this information could jump start a competitor and could undercut the service provider""s exclusive ownership of the subscriber information. Third, many service providers wish to leverage the investment they made in their customer database without disclosing the database to competitors. Accordingly, a need exists to provide third parties access to subscriber information and preferences while overcoming these problems.
Another shortcoming for service providers that have established large customer database is not only the inability to leverage the use of their customer database but the inability to track usage of customer database information by a third party. Third parties many times would prefer to pay a premium to have information on customers that respond to messages from the third party instead of paying a bulk mail rate. The third parties are interested in paying for information on the subscribers that actually respond to the third party message, such as an advertisement. Accordingly, a need exists for service providers to provide a method and system to monitor the usage and interest of the subscriber in their advertisement messages.
Still, another shortcoming that exists when sending third party messages to subscribers is the inability for one or more subscribers to collaborate to purchase a service in a group. Many individuals and businesses want to reduce costs by buying items in quantities. If one or more of these individuals or businesses could find out others that are interested in a certain message or advertisement from a third party, these individuals or business could collaborate to buy a service in bulk if possible. For example, it may be cheaper for two small businesses to purchase new computers jointly through a volume discount, where each of the respective businesses alone can not meet the volume discount individually. Accordingly, a need exists to provide subscribers who receive third party advertisement a method and system to collaborate buying efforts.
Briefly, in accordance with the present invention, a method for distributing messages from a third-party comprising the steps of: storing subscriber information for one or more subscribers in a database; querying the database using a subscriber selection system for subscriber information relating to one or more subscribers; and coupling a billing system to the database for providing bills to one or more subscribers; receiving one or more messages from a third party to the billing system; and providing one or more messages to the subscribers as selected by the subscriber selected system. The message includes a contact address which is sent along to the subscribers in the group to form a community for group purchasing of a good and/or service from a third party. The group of subscribers formed are sent the contact address with the messages received from the third party. The group purchase allows individuals and businesses to reduce costs by buying items in quantities.
In another embodiment, the use of the message by a subscriber is monitored through the use of an address redirector. The third part is billed based on the actual response of usage of the third party message and the database storing subscriber information is updated according to the subscriber""s response to the third party message.
In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, an information processing system and computer readable medium is disclosed for carrying out the above method.
In another embodiment, the use of the message by a subscriber is monitored through the use of an address redirector. The third party is billed based on the actual response of usage of the third party message and the database storing subscriber information is updated according to the subscriber""s response to the third party message.
In accordance with another embodiment of the present invention, an information processing system and computer readable medium is disclosed for carrying out the above method for changing client software on a network comprises the steps of: